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• How to get faster graphics in KVM? VNC is painfully slow with Haiku OS guest, Spice won't install and SDL doesn't work

  - by Don Quixote

  I've been coming up to speed on the Haiku operating system, an Open Source clone of BeOS 5 Pro. I'm using an Apple MacBook Pro as my development machine. Apple's BootCamp BIOS does not support more than four partitions on the internal hard drive. While I can set up extended and logical partitions, doing so will prevent any of the installed operating systems from booting. To run Haiku directly on the iron, I boot it off a USB stick. Using external storage is also helpful because I am perpetually out of filesystem space. While VirtualBox is documented to allow access to physical drives, I could not actually get it to work. Also VirtualBox can only use one of the host CPU's cores. While VB guests can be configured for more than one CPU, they are only emulated. A full build of the Haiku OS takes 4.5 under VB. I had the hope of reducing build times by using KVM instead, but it's not working nearly as well as VirtualBox did. The Linux Kernel Virtual Machine is broken in all manner of fundamental ways as seen from Haiku. But I'm a coder; maybe I could contribute to fixing some of those problems. The first problem I've got is that Haiku's video in virt-manager is quite painfully slow. When I drag Haiku windows around the desktop, they lag quite far behind where my mouse is. It's quite difficult to move a window to a precise position on the screen. Just imagine that the mouse was connected to the window title bar with a really stretchy spring. Also Haiku's mouse lags quite far behind where I have moved it. I found lots of Personal Package Archives that enable Spice from QEMU / KVM at the Ubuntu Personal Package Arhives. I tried a few of the PPAs but none of them worked; with one of them, the command "add-apt-repository" crashed with a traceback. There is a Wiki page about Spice, but it says that it only works on 64-bit. My Early 2006 MacBook Pro is 32-bit. Its Apple Model Identifier is MacBookPro1,1; these use Core Duos NOT Core 2 Duos. I don't mind building a source deb for 32-bit if I can expect it to work. Is there some reason that Spice should be 64-bit only? Does it need features of the x86_64 Instruction Set Architecture that x86 does not have? When I try using SDL from virt-manager, the configuration for Local SDL Window says "Xauth: /home/mike/.Xauthority". When I try to start my guest, virt-manager emits an error. When I Googled the error message, the usual solution was to make ~/.Xauthority readible. However, .Xauthorty does not exist in my home directory. Instead I have a $XAUTHORITY environment variable. There is no way to configure SDL in virt-manager to use $XAUTHORITY instead of ~/.Xauthority. Neither does it work to copy the value of $XAUTHORITY into the file. I am ready to scream, because I've been five fscking days trying to make KVM work for Haiku development. There is a whole lot more that is broken than the slow video. All I really want to do for now is speed up my full builds of Haiku by using "jam -j2" to use both cores in my CPU. I may try Xen next, but the last time I monkeyed with Xen it was far, far more broken than I am finding KVM to be. Just for now, I would be satisfied if there were some way to use my USB stick as a drive in VirtualBox. VB does allow me to configure /dev/sdb as a drive, but it always causes a fatal error when I try to launch the guest. Thank You For Any Advice You Can Give Me. -

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• Parsing T-SQL – The easy way

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  Every once in a while, I hit an issue that would require me to interrogate/parse some T-SQL code.  Normally, I would shy away from this and attempt to solve the problem in some other way.  I have written parsers before in the the past using LEX and YACC, and as much fun and awesomeness that path is,  I couldnt justify the time it would take. However, this week I have been faced with just such an issue and at the back of my mind I can remember reading through the SQLServer 2012 feature pack and seeing something called “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Transact-SQL Language Service “.  This is described there as : “The SQL Server Transact-SQL Language Service is a component based on the .NET Framework which provides parsing validation and IntelliSense services for Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2008. “ Sounds just what I was after.  Documentation is very scant on this so dont take what follows as best practice or best use, just a practice and a use. Knowing what I was sort of looking for something, I found the relevant assembly in the gac which is the simply named ,’Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser’. Even knowing that you wont find much in terms of documentation if you do a web-search, but you will find the MSDN documentation that list the members and methods etc… The “scanner”  class sounded the most appropriate for my needs as that is described as “Scans Transact-SQL searching for individual units of code or tokens.”. After a bit of poking, around the code i ended up with was something like [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser") | Out-Null $ParseOptions = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.ParseOptions $ParseOptions.BatchSeparator = 'GO' $Parser = new-object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Scanner($ParseOptions) $Sql = "Create Procedure MyProc as Select top(10) * from dbo.Table" $Parser.SetSource($Sql,0) $Token=[Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]::TOKEN_SET $Start =0 $End = 0 $State =0 $IsEndOfBatch = $false $IsMatched = $false $IsExecAutoParamHelp = $false while(($Token = $Parser.GetNext([ref]$State ,[ref]$Start, [ref]$End, [ref]$IsMatched, [ref]$IsExecAutoParamHelp ))-ne [Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]::EOF) { try{ ($TokenPrs =[Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]$Token) | Out-Null $TokenPrs $Sql.Substring($Start,($end-$Start)+1) }catch{ $TokenPrs = $null } } As you can see , the $Sql variable holds the sql to be parsed , that is pushed into the $Parser object using SetSource,  and then we will use GetNext until the EOF token is returned.  GetNext will also return the Start and End character positions within the source string of the parsed text. This script’s output is : TOKEN_CREATE Create TOKEN_PROCEDURE Procedure TOKEN_ID MyProc TOKEN_AS as TOKEN_SELECT Select TOKEN_TOP top TOKEN_INTEGER 10 TOKEN_FROM from TOKEN_ID dbo TOKEN_TABLE Table note that the ‘(‘, ‘)’  and ‘*’ characters have returned a token type that is not present in the Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens Enum that has caused an error which has been caught in the catch block.  Fun, Fun ,Fun , Simple T-SQL Parsing.  Hope this helps someone in the same position,  let me know how you get on.

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• Taking HRMS to the Cloud to Simplify Human Resources Management

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Anke Mogannam With human capital management (HCM) a top-of-mind issue for executives in every industry, human resources (HR) organizations are poised to have their day in the sun—proving not just their administrative worth but their strategic value as well.  To make good on that promise, however, HR must modernize. Indeed, if HR is to act as an agent of change—providing the swift reallocation of employees  and the rapid absorption of employee data required for enterprises to shift course on a dime—it must first deal with the disruptive change at its own front door. And increasingly, that means choosing the right technology and human resources management system (HRMS) for managing the entire employee lifecycle. Unfortunately, for most organizations, this task has proved easier said than done. This is because while much has been written about advances in HRMS technology, until recently, most of those advances took the form of disparate on-premises solutions designed to serve very specific purposes. Although this may have resulted in key competencies in certain areas, it also meant that processes for core HR functions like payroll and benefits were being carried out in separate systems from those used for talent management, workforce optimization, training, and so on. With no integration—and no single system of record—processes were disconnected, ease of use was impeded, user experience was diminished, and vital data was left untapped.  Today, however, that scenario has begun to change, and end-to-end cloud-based HCM solutions have moved from wished-for innovations to real-life solutions. Why, then, have HR organizations been so slow in adopting them? The answer—it would seem—is, “It’s complicated.” So complicated, in fact, that 45 percent of the respondents to PwC’s “Annual HR Technology Survey” (for 2013) reported having no formal HR software roadmap, and 40 percent stated that they “did not know” whether their organizations would be increasing their use of cloud or software as a service (SaaS) for HR.  Clearly, HR organizations need help sorting through the morass of HR software options confronting them. But just as clearly, there’s an enormous opportunity awaiting those that do. The trick will come in charting a course that allows HR to leverage existing technology while investing in the cloud-based solutions that will deliver the end-to-end processes, easy-to-understand analytics, and superior adaptability required to simplify—and add value to—every aspect of employee management. The Opportunity therefore is to cut costs, drive Innovation, and increase engagement by moving to cloud-based HCM.  Then you will benefit from one Interface, leverage many access points, and  gain at-a-glance insight across your entire workforce. With many legacy on-premises HR systems not being efficient anymore and cloud-based, integrated systems that span the range of HR functions finally reaching maturity, the time is ripe for moving core HR to the cloud. Indeed, for the first time ever there are more HRMS replacement initiatives than HRMS upgrade initiatives under way, and the majority of them involve moving to the cloud per Cedar Crestone’s 2013-2014 HRMS survey. To learn how you can launch your own cloud HCM initiative and begin using HR to power the enterprise, visit Oracle HRMS in the Cloud and Oracle’s new customer 2 cloud program. Anke Mogannam brings more than 16 years of marketing and human capital management experience in the technology industries to her role at Oracle where she is part of the Human Capital Management applications marketing team. In that role, Anke drives content marketing, messaging, go-to-market activities, integrated marketing campaigns, and field enablement. Prior to joining Oracle, Anke held several roles in communications, marketing, HCM product strategy and product management at PeopleSoft, SAP, Workday and Saba. Follow her on Twitter @amogannam

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• Fetching Partition Information

  - by Mike Femenella

  For a recent SSIS package at work I needed to determine the distinct values in a partition, the number of rows in each partition and the file group name on which each partition resided in order to come up with a grouping mechanism. Of course sys.partitions comes to mind for some of that but there are a few other tables you need to link to in order to grab the information required. The table I’m working on contains 8.8 billion rows. Finding the distinct partition keys from this table was not a fast operation. My original solution was to create  a temporary table, grab the distinct values for the partitioned column, then update via sys.partitions for the rows and the $partition function for the partitionid and finally look back to the sys.filegroups table for the filegroup names. It wasn’t pretty, it could take up to 15 minutes to return the results. The primary issue is pulling distinct values from the table. Queries for distinct against 8.8 billion rows don’t go quickly. A few beers into a conversation with a friend and we ended up talking about work which led to a conversation about the task described above. The solution was already built in SQL Server, just needed to pull it together. The first table I needed was sys.partition_range_values. This contains one row for each range boundary value for a partition function. In my case I have a partition function which uses dayid values. For example July 4th would be represented as an int, 20130704. This table lists out all of the dayid values which were defined in the function. This eliminated the need to query my source table for distinct dayid values, everything I needed was already built in here for me. The only caveat was that in my SSIS package I needed to create a bucket for any dayid values that were out of bounds for my function. For example if my function handled 20130501 through 20130704 and I had day values of 20130401 or 20130705 in my table, these would not be listed in sys.partition_range_values. I just created an “everything else” bucket in my ssis package just in case I had any dayid values unaccounted for. To get the number of rows for a partition is very easy. The sys.partitions table contains values for each partition. Easy enough to achieve by querying for the object_id and index value of 1 (the clustered index) The final piece of information was the filegroup name. There are 2 options available to get the filegroup name, sys.data_spaces or sys.filegroups. For my query I chose sys.filegroups but really it’s a matter of preference and data needs. In order to bridge between sys.partitions table and either sys.data_spaces or sys.filegroups you need to get the container_id. This can be done by joining sys.allocation_units.container_id to the sys.partitions.hobt_id. sys.allocation_units contains the field data_space_id which then lets you join in either sys.data_spaces or sys.file_groups. The end result is the query below, which typically executes for me in under 1 second. I’ve included the join to sys.filegroups and to sys.dataspaces, and I’ve  just commented out the join sys.filegroups. As I mentioned above, this shaves a good 10-15 minutes off of my original ssis package and is a really easy tweak to get a boost in my ETL time. Enjoy.

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• OPN Exchange General Sessions –Fowler, Kurian & More!

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} With so much excitement about to take place at OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld, it’s hard to decide what to attend, where to go, who to meet and what to eat! Let us help you decide by first asking a question… How often do you get to choose between seven key Oracle Executives as they address the five biggest topics facing the industry today? After the Partner Keynote with Judson Althoff, join us for the OPN Exchange General Sessions: DATE: Sunday September 30th TIME: 3:30-4:30 pm LOCATION: Moscone South, Esplanade Level John Fowler & Tom LaRocca (Technology for Partners: Room 306): Learn how to grow your top and bottom line by selling Oracle on Oracle. Chris Leone (Applications for Partners: Room 303): Catch the partner-only value prop, selling secrets and competitive compares to win with the Fusions Applications product family. Angelo Pruscino & Sohan DeMel (Engineered Systems for Partners: Room 301): Get the secrets to selling and implementing Oracle’s transformational Engineered Systems products. You won’t want to miss the Oracle Database Appliance Unplugged demonstration! Sonny Singh (Industry Solutions: Room 302): Develop profitable practices answering the challenges faced by companies operating in discrete industries and the opportunity represented by Machine2Machine Java. Thomas Kurian (Cloud for Partnesr: Room 304): Today it is all about the Cloud. Oracle offers both traditional cloud infrastructure solutions, as well cloud platform and software services. Attend this session to learn more about Oracle’s Platform, Application, and Social cloud services. Put on your thinking caps because these speakers are ready to blow your mind with five tracks of exclusive content catered to you, our partners. Boom! The OPN Communication Team Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• Designing An ACL Based Permission System

  - by ryanzec

  I am trying to create a permissions system where everything is going to be stored in MySQL (or some database) and pulled using PHP for a project management system I am building.  I am right now trying to do it is an ACL kind of way.  There are a number key features I want to be able to support: 1.  Being able to assign permissions without being tied to a specific object. The reason for this is that I want to be able to selectively show/hide elements of the UI based on permissions at a point where I am not directly looking at a domain object instance.  For instance, a button to create a new project should only should only be shown to users that have the pm.project.create permission but obviously you can assign a create permission to an domain object instance (as it is already created). 2.  Not have to assign permissions for every single object. Obviously creating permissions entries for every single object (projects, tickets, comments, etc…) would become a nightmare to maintain so I want to have some level of permission inheritance. *3.  Be able to filter queries based on permissions. This would be a really nice to have but I am not sure if it is possible.  What I mean by this is say I have a page that list all projects.  I want the query that pulls all projects to incorporate the ACL so that it would not show projects that the current user does not have pm.project.read access to.  This would have to be incorporated into the main query as if it is a process that is done after that main query (which I know I could do) certain features like pagination become much more difficult. Right now this is my basic design for the tables: AclEntities id - the primary key key - the unique identifier for the domain object (usually the primary key of that object) parentId - the parent of the domain object (like the project object if this was a ticket object) aclDomainObjectId - metadata about the domain object AclDomainObjects id - primary key title - simple string to unique identify the domain object(ie. project, ticket, comment, etc…) fullyQualifiedClassName - the fully qualified class name for use in code (I am using namespaces) There would also be tables mapping AclEntities to Users and UserGroups. I also have this interface that all acl entity based object have to implement: IAclEntity getAclKey() - to the the unique key for this specific instance of the acl domain object (generally return the primary key or a concatenated string of a composite primary key) getAclTitle() - to get the unique title for the domain object (generally just returning a static string) getAclDisplayString() - get the string that represents this entity (generally one or more field on the object) getAclParentEntity() - get the parent acl entity object (or null if no parent) getAclEntity() - get the acl enitty object for this instance of the domain object (or null if one has not been created yet) hasPermission($permissionString, $user = null) - whether or not the user has the permission for this instance of the domain object static getFromAclEntityId($aclEntityId) - get a specific instance of the domain object from an acl entity id. Do any of these features I am looking for seems hard to support or are just way off base? Am I missing or not taking in account anything in my implementation? Is performance something I should keep in mind?

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• Public Sector FMW Customer Tech Day in Reston, Tuesday Oct 7th

  - by BPMWarrior

  Have your heard? There is another PS FMW Customer Tech Day scheduled in the Oracle Reston office!                                                                                          Fusion Middleware Customer Tech Day                                                          October 7, 2014                                   Please join Oracle & Sofbang on Tuesday October 7th for our second Public Sector Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFMW) Customer Tech Day in Reston.   This Tech Day is designed with you the customer in mind. Come learn and share with other customers. This event will be centered on Mobility, App Advantage, WebCenter, SOA, BPM, Security and FMWaaS.   Sofbang enables customers to create, integrate and run agile intelligent business applications leveraging Oracle Fusion Middleware. Based out of Chicago, IL, Sofbang is recognized as an Oracle Platinum level Partner in the Oracle Partner Network. For more information on Sofbang, please visit www.sofbang.com   To confirm your attendance at this Event or for more information, please email [email protected]                                              

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• Get Fanatical About Your Followers

  - by Mike Stiles

  In the fourth of our series of discussions with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we touch on what fans of your brand have come to expect in exchange for their fandom. Spotlight: Around the Oracle Social office, we live for football. So when we think of a true “fan” of a brand, something on the level of a football fan is what comes to mind. But are brands trying to invest fans on that same level? Trip: Yeah, if you’re a football fan, this is definitely your time of year. And if you’ve been to any NFL games recently, especially if you hadn’t been for a few years previously, you may have noticed that from the cup holders to in-stadium Wi-Fi, there’s an increasing emphasis being placed on “fan-focused” accommodations. That’s what they’re known as in the stadium business. Spotlight: How are brands doing in that fan-focused arena? Trip: Remember fan is short for “fanatical.” Brands can definitely learn from the way teams have become fanatical about their fans, or in the social media world, their followers. Many companies consider a segment of their addressable social audience as true fans; I’ve even heard the term “super-fans” used. So just as fans know and can tell you nearly everything about their favorite team, our research shows that there’s a lot value from getting to know your social audience—your followers—at a deeper level. Spotlight: So did your research show there’s a lot to be gained by making fandom a two-way street? Trip: Aberdeen’s new social relationship management research suggests that companies should develop capabilities to better analyze their social audience at a more granular level. Countless “ripped from the headlines” examples, from “United Breaks Guitars” to the most recent British Airways social fiasco we talked about a few weeks ago show how social can magnify the impact of a single customer voice. Spotlight: So how do the companies who are executing social most successfully do that? Trip: Leaders, which are the top-performing companies in Aberdeen’s study, are showing the value of identifying and categorizing your social audience. You should certainly treat every customer as if they have 10,000 followers, because they just might, but you can also proactively engage with high-value customer and high-value influencers. Getting back to the football analogy, it’s like how teams strive to give every guest a great experience, but they really roll out the red carpet for those season ticket and luxury box holders. Spotlight: I’m not allowed in luxury boxes, so you’ll have to tell me what that’s like. But what is the brand equivalent of rolling out the red carpet? Trip: Leaders are nearly three times more likely than Followers to have a process in place that identifies key social influencers for engagement, and more than twice as likely to identify customer advocates for social outreach. This is the kind of knowledge that gives companies the ability to better target social messaging and promotions like we talked about in our last discussion, as well as a basis for understanding how to measure the impact of their social media programs. I’ll give you an example. I hosted an event at one of my favorite restaurants recently. I had mentioned them in a Tweet several weeks before the event, and on the day of the event, they Tweeted out that they were looking forward to seeing me that evening for the event. It’s a small thing, but it had a big impact and I’d certainly go back as a result. Spotlight: So what specifically can brands use and look at to determine where their potential super-fans are? Trip: Social graph analysis, which looks at both the demographic/psychographic trends as well as the behavioral connections, can surface important brand value. Aberdeen’s PR and Brand Management research indicated that top-performing companies are more than three times more likely than Followers to both determine demographic trends through social listening (44% vs. 13%), and to identify meaningful customer segments through social (44% vs. 12%). This kind of brand-level insight can complement and enrich traditional market research. But perhaps even more importantly, it can serve as an early warning system for customer experience failures. @mikestilesPhoto: freedigitalphotos.net

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• Refactoring existing PHP Project. I need some advices

  - by b0x

  i have a small SAS ERP that was written some years ago using PHP. At that time, it didn't used any framework, but the code isn't a mess as i will explain more detailed in the following lines. Nowadays, the project grow and I’m now working with 3 more programmers. Often, they ask to me why we don’t migrate to a framework such Laravel. Although I'd love trying Laravel, I’m a small business and i don't have time/money to stop and spend a whole year building everything from scratch. I need to live and pay the bills. So, I've read a lot about this matter, and I decided that doing a refactoring is the best way to do it. Also, I'm not so sure that a framework will make things easy. Business goals are: Make the code easier to new hired programmers I must separate the "view", because: I want to release different versions of this product (using the same code), but under different brands and websites at the minimum cost (just changing view) Release different versions to fit mobile/tablet. Make different types of this product, seeling packages as if it were plugins. Develop custom packages for some costumers (like plugins/addon's that they can buy to put on the main application). Code goals: Introduce best pratices, standards for everyone Try to build my own MVC structure Improve validation of data/forms (today they are mixed in both ajax and classes) Create automated testing rotines, to quality assurance. My actual structure project: class\ extra\ hd\ logs\ public_html\ public_html\includes\ public_html\css|js|images\ class\ There are three types of classes. They are all “autoloaded” with something similar with PSR-0, but I don’t use namespaces. 1. class.Something.php Connects to Database using specific methods. I.e: Costumer-list(); It uses “class.Db.php”, that it’s an abstraction of mysqli on every method. 2. class.SomethingProc.php Do things that “join” things that come from “class.Something.php”. Like IF/ELSE, math operations. 3. class.SomethingHTML.php The classes with “HTML” suffix implements only static methods and HTML code only. A real life example: All the programmers need to use $cSomething ($c to class) and $arrSomething (to array). Costumer.php (view) <?php $cCosumter = new Costumer(); $arrCostumer = $cCostumer->list(); echo CostumerHTML::table($arrCostumer); ?> Extra\ Store 3rdparty projects/classes from others, such MPDF, PHPMailer, etc. Hd\ Store user’s fies outsite wwwroot dir. Logs\ Store phplogs and the system itself logs (We have a static Log::error() method, that we put in every method of every class) Public_html\ Stores the files that people use. Public_html\includes\ Store the main “config.php” file and all files that do “ajax things” ajax.Costumer.php, for example. Help is needed ;) So, as you can see we have some standards, and also for database things. But i want to write a manual of our rules. Something that i can give to any new programmer at my companie and he can go on. This is not totally a mess, but It could be better seeing the new practices. What could I do to separate this as MVC, to have multiple VIEW’s. Could you gimme some tips considering my goals? Keep im mind the different products/custom things for specific costumers without breaking the main application. URL for tutorials, books, etc. It would be nice. Thanks!

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• Advice on refactoring PHP Project

  - by b0x

  I have a small SAS ERP that was written some years ago using PHP. At that time, it didn't use any framework, but the code isn't a mess. Nowadays, the project grows and I’m now working with 3 more programmers. Often, they ask to me why we don’t migrate to a framework such as Laravel. Although I'd love trying Laravel, I’m a small business and I don't have time nor money to stop and spend a whole year building everything from scratch. I need to live and pay the bills. So, I've read a lot about this matter, and I decided that doing a refactoring is the best way to do it. Also, I'm not so sure that a framework will make things easy. Business goals are: Make the code easier to new hired programmers Separate the "view", in order to: release different versions of this product (using the same code), but under different brands and websites at the minimum cost (just changing view) release different versions to fit mobile/tablet. Make different types of this product, selling packages as if they were plugins. Develop custom packages for some costumers (like plugins/addon's that they can buy to put on the main application). Code goals: Introduce best pratices, standards for everyone Try to build my own MVC structure Improve validation of data/forms (today they are mixed in both ajax and classes) Create automated testing routines for quality assurance. My current structure project: class\ extra\ hd\ logs\ public_html\ public_html\includes\ public_html\css|js|images\ class\ There are three types of classes. They are all “autoloaded” with something similar with PSR-0, but I don’t use namespaces. 1. class.Something.php Connects to Database using specific methods. I.e: Costumer-list(); It uses “class.Db.php”, that it’s an abstraction of mysql on every method. 2. class.SomethingProc.php Do things that “join” things that come from “class.Something.php”. Like IF/ELSE, math operations. 3. class.SomethingHTML.php The classes with “HTML” suffix implements only static methods and HTML code only. A real life example: All the programmers need to use $cSomething ($c to class) and $arrSomething (to array). Costumer.php (view) <?php $cCosumter = new Costumer(); $arrCostumer = $cCostumer->list(); echo CostumerHTML::table($arrCostumer); ?> Extra\ Store 3rdparty projects/classes from others, such MPDF, PHPMailer, etc. Hd\ Store user’s files outsite wwwroot dir. Logs\ Store phplogs and the system itself logs (We have a static Log::error() method, that we put in every method of every class) Public_html\ Stores the files that people use. Public_html\includes\ Store the main “config.php” file and all files that do “ajax things” ajax.Costumer.php, for example. Help is needed ;) So, as you can see we have some standards, and also for database things. But I want to write a manual of our rules. Something that I can give to any new programmer at my company and he can go on. This is not totally a mess, but it could be better seeing the new practices. What could I do to separate this as MVC, to have multiple views. Could you give me some tips considering my goals? Keep im mind the different products/custom things for specific costumers without breaking the main application. URL for tutorials, books, etc, would be nice.

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Jeff Foster

  My previous blog, Deliberate Practice, discussed the need for developers to “sharpen their pencil” continually, by setting aside time to learn how to tackle problems in different ways. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a contested and somewhat-controversial concept from language theory, seems to hold reasonably true when applied to programming languages. It states that: “The structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.” If you’re constrained by a single programming language, the one that dominates your day job, then you only have the tools of that language at your disposal to think about and solve a problem. For example, if you’ve only ever worked with Java, you would never think of passing a function to a method. A good developer needs to learn many languages. You may never deploy them in production, you may never ship code with them, but by learning a new language, you’ll have new ideas that will transfer to your current “day-job” language. With the abundant choices in programming languages, how does one choose which to learn? Alan Perlis sums it up best. “A language that doesn‘t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing“ With that in mind, here’s a selection of languages that I think are worth learning and that have certainly changed the way I think about tackling programming problems. Clojure Clojure is a Lisp-based language running on the Java Virtual Machine. The unique property of Lisp is homoiconicity, which means that a Lisp program is a Lisp data structure, and vice-versa. Since we can treat Lisp programs as Lisp data structures, we can write our code generation in the same style as our code. This gives Lisp a uniquely powerful macro system, and makes it ideal for implementing domain specific languages. Clojure also makes software transactional memory a first-class citizen, giving us a new approach to concurrency and dealing with the problems of shared state. Haskell Haskell is a strongly typed, functional programming language. Haskell’s type system is far richer than C# or Java, and allows us to push more of our application logic to compile-time safety. If it compiles, it usually works! Haskell is also a lazy language – we can work with infinite data structures. For example, in a board game we can generate the complete game tree, even if there are billions of possibilities, because the values are computed only as they are needed. Erlang Erlang is a functional language with a strong emphasis on reliability. Erlang’s approach to concurrency uses message passing instead of shared variables, with strong support from both the language itself and the virtual machine. Processes are extremely lightweight, and garbage collection doesn’t require all processes to be paused at the same time, making it feasible for a single program to use millions of processes at once, all without the mental overhead of managing shared state. The Benefits of Multilingualism By studying new languages, even if you won’t ever get the chance to use them in production, you will find yourself open to new ideas and ways of coding in your main language. For example, studying Haskell has taught me that you can do so much more with types and has changed my programming style in C#. A type represents some state a program should have, and a type should not be able to represent an invalid state. I often find myself refactoring methods like this… void SomeMethod(bool doThis, bool doThat) { if (!(doThis ^ doThat)) throw new ArgumentException(“At least one arg should be true”); if (doThis) DoThis(); if (doThat) DoThat(); } …into a type-based solution, like this: enum Action { DoThis, DoThat, Both }; void SomeMethod(Action action) { if (action == Action.DoThis || action == Action.Both) DoThis(); if (action == Action.DoThat || action == Action.Both) DoThat(); } At this point, I’ve removed the runtime exception in favor of a compile-time check. This is a trivial example, but is just one of many ideas that I’ve taken from one language and implemented in another.

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• Managing software projects - advice needed

  - by Callum

  I work for a large government department as part of an IT team that manages and develops websites as well as stand alone web applications. We’re running in to problems somewhere in the SDLC that don’t rear their ugly head until time and budget are starting to run out. We try to be “Agile” (software specifications are not as thorough as possible, clients have direct access to the developers any time they want) and we are also in a reasonably peculiar position in that we are not allowed to make profit from the services we provide. We only service the divisions within our government department, and can only charge for the time and effort we actually put in to a project. So if we deliver a project that we have over-quoted on, we will only invoice for the actual time spent. Our software specifications are not as thorough as they could be, but they always include at a minimum: Wireframe mockups for every form view A data dictionary of all field inputs Descriptions of any business rules that affect the system Descriptions of the outputs I’m new to software management, but I’ve overseen enough software projects now to know that as soon as users start observing demos of the system, they start making a huge amount of requests like “Can we add a few more fields to this report.. can we redesign the look of this interface.. can we send an email at this part of the workflow.. can we take this button off this view.. can we make this function redirect to a different screen.. can we change some text on this screen… can we create a special account where someone can log in and get access to X… this report takes too long to run can it be optimised.. can we remove this step in the workflow… there’s got to be a better image we can put here…” etc etc etc. Some changes are tiny and can be implemented reasonably quickly.. but there could be up to 50-100 or so of such requests during the course of the SDLC. Other change requests are what clients claim they “just assumed would be part of the system” even if not explicitly spelled out in the spec. We are having a lot of difficulty managing this process. With no experienced software project managers in our team, we need to come up with a better way to both internally identify whether work being requested is “out of spec”, and be able to communicate this to a client in such a manner that they can understand why what they are asking for is “extra” work. We need a way to track this work and be transparent with it. In the spirit of Agile development where we are not spec'ing software systems in to the ground and back again before development begins, and bearing in mind that clients have access to any developer any time they want it, I am looking for some tips and pointers from experienced software project managers on how to handle this sort of "scope creep" problem, in tracking it, being transparent with it, and communicating it to clients such that they understand it. Happy to clarify anything as needed. I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to offer some advice. Thanks.

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• Why Are We Here?

  - by Jonathan Mills

  Back in the early 2000s, Toyota had a vision of building the number one best selling minivan in North America. Their current minivan, the Sienna, was small, underpowered, and badly needed help.  Yuji Yokoya was given the job of re-engineering the Sienna. There was just one problem, Yuji, lived in Japan. He did not know the people or places that he would be engineering for. Believe it or not, Japan is nothing like North America. So, what does a chief engineer do in a situation like that? He packed up his team and flew halfway around the world. He made a commitment to drive through every state in the US, every province in Canada, and Mexico. He met the people and drove the roads that the Sienna would be driving. And guess what, what he learned on that trip revolutionized the Sienna. The innovations he made, sent the Sienna to number one. Why? Because he knew who he was building his product for. He knew, why he was there.Let me ask you this, do you know why you are building what you are building? As a member of a product team, can you tell me how your product will be used in the real world? As you are writing code, building test plans, writing stories, or any of the other project tasks, can you picture the face of a person who will be using what you are building? All to often, the answer to those questions is, no. Why is it important? Because, every day, project team members make assumptions. Over a given project, it is safe to say project team members will make thousands of assumptions about what they are doing. And all to often, those assumptions are not quite right. Its not that they are not good at their job, its just that they don’t really know why they are there.So, what to do? First and foremost, stop doing what you are doing. Yes, really. Schedule some time to go visit the people who will be using your product. Don’t invite them to you, go to them. Watch them work. Interact with them. Ask them questions. Maybe even try it out yourself. This serves two purposes. One, It shows them that you care about them. They will be far more engaged in your project if they feel like you care. And nothing says you care more that spending some time. Second, if gives you the proper frame of reference for you work. It gives you something tangible to go back to as you are building your product. As you make the thousands of assumptions that you will make over the life of your project, it gives you something to see in your mind that makes it real to you.Ultimately, setting a proper frame of reference is critical to the overall success of a project. The funny thing is, it really does not even take that long. In most cases, a 2-3 hour session will give you most of what you need to get the right insight. For the project, it will be the best 2 hours you could spend.

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• Free hosting solution for a very low-traffic website [duplicate]

  - by user966939

  This question already has an answer here: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? 4 answers I run a very low-traffic website (about 40 users, basically all of which are daily active on the site). I don't see it changing anytime soon either, as there is no way to sign up on the site right now. Until now I have just been using a sub-directory on a friend's host (shared), to host the web site. But in only a few weeks from now, his subscription will end, and he has no plans on renewing it. So of course this means I'll have to move on to something else. But I don't think I'll find someone who'd be willing to share a... shared host with me again. And besides, the software used on that server is ancient (PHP 4.4.9 + MySQL 4.1.22). There's one obvious solution that comes to mind, I guess: choose a better host and pay for it myself. The problem here is that I have no real fixed income, as I'm only a student. So even if the pricing is dirt cheap, I just can't be certain I will be able to afford it, every single month, for... at least 2 years maybe? So I've looked at free hosting solutions instead. The least requirement I had was that it was completely free of ads. But no matter where I look, I always find something in a corner or two ("what can you expect from a free host?" - yeah I know, but I guess it was worth a shot). For example, on Byethost (one of the free hosts I tried), if you trigger a PHP error while error reporting is set to E_ALL, you will spawn some hidden ad... Besides Byethost, I've tried 000Webhost, x10Hosting, 2Freehosting/1Freehosting, Wink.ws, and they are only worse. Okay, I'm running low on ideas. But! What if I just hosted the site myself, on my own computer? That could work. I actually do have my computer on practically 24/7. But not really. Sometimes I need to reboot it, and sometimes we even have power outages. And what if the hardware needs an upgrade? It's not such a big deal for me if the site went down, because I know what's going on; but what about the users? If I do decide to host it myself, is there some way to show users an alternate page instead of them just seeing a generic "server not found" page in the browser when the site is not accessible? Or is there something I have been missing out on? Is there a different kind of "web hosting" solution out there that I haven't heard of? Here is what I'm really looking for: Free (as in, no costs) NO ads Bandwidth enough for a low-traffic forum with roughly 40 users (Semi-)Up-to-date PHP and MySQL (at least not older than a year) No standard (non-extension) PHP functions turned off - such as sleep() The mbstring extension is enabled Disk space: at least 5 MB At least one MySQL database Some bonus points would be: Max execution time of PHP scripts can be set Remote access to MySQL database What would be the best solution for me? Is there one?

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Fixed Broadband

  Already at the begin of April, I had a phone conversation with my representative at Emtel Ltd. about some upcoming issues due to the ongoing construction work in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, they finally raised the house two levels above ours, and of course this has to have a negative impact on the visibility between the WiMAX outdoor unit on the roof and the aimed access point at Medine. So, today I had a technical team here to do a site survey and to come up with potential solutions. Short version: It doesn't look good after all. The site survey Well, the two technicians did their work properly, even re-arranged the antenna to check the connection with another end point down at La Preneuse. But no improvements. Looks like we are out of luck since the construction next door hasn't finished yet and at the moment, it even looks like they are planning to put at least one more level on top. I really wonder about the sanity of the responsible bodies at the local district council. But that's another story. Anyway, the outdoor unit was once again pointed towards Medine and properly fixed with new cable guides (air from the sea and rust...). Both of them did a good job and fine-tuned the reception signal to a mere 3 over 9; compared to the original 7 over 9 I had before the daily terror started. The site survey has been done, and now it's up to Emtel to come up with (better) solutions. Well, I wouldn't mind to have an unlimited, symmetric 3G/UMTS or even LTE connection. Let's see what they can do... Testing the connection There are several online sites available which offer you to check certain aspects of your internet connection. Personally, I'm used to speedtest.net and it works very well. I think it is good and necessary to check your connection from time to time, and only a couple of days ago, I posted the following on Emtel's wall at Facebook (21.05.2013 - 14:06 hrs): Dear Emtel, could you eventually provide an answer on the miserable results of SpeedTest? I chose Rose Hill (Hosted by Emtel Ltd.) as testing endpoint... Sadly, no response to this. Seems that the marketing department is not willing to deal with customers on Facebook. Okay, over at speedtest.net you can use their Flash-based test suite to check your connection to quite a number of servers of different providers world-wide. It's actually very interesting to see the results for different end points and to compare them to each other. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Luckily, the results are quite similar in terms of connection speed; which is good. I'm currently on a WiMAX tariff called 'Classic Browsing 2', or Fixed Broadband as they call it now, which provides a symmetric line of 768 Kbps (or roughly 0.75 Mbps). In terms of downloads or uploads this means that I would be able to transfer files in either direction with approximately 96 KB/s. Frankly speaking, thanks to compression, my choice of browser and operating system I usually exceed this value and I have download rates up to 120 KB/s - not too bad after all. Only the ping times are a little bit of concern. Due to the difference in distance, or better said based on the number of hubs between the endpoints, they indicate the amount of time that it takes to send a package from your machine to the remote server and get a response back. A lower value is better, and usually the ping is less than 300 ms between Mauritius and Europe. The alternatives in Mauritius Not sure whether I should note this done because for my requirements there are no alternatives to Emtel WiMAX at the moment. It would be great to have your opinion on the situation of internet connectivity in Mauritius. Are there really alternatives? And if so, what are the conditions?

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• Perspective Is Everything

  - by juanlarios

  Sitting on a window seat on my way back from Seattle I looked out the window and saw the large body of water. I was reminded of childhood memories of running as hard as I could through burning hot sand with the anticipation of the splash of the ocean. Looking out the window the water appeared like a sheet draped over land. I couldn’t help but ponder how perspective changes everything.  Over the last several days I had a chance to attend the MVP Summit in Redmond. I had a great time with fellow MVP’s and the SharePoint Product Group. Although I can’t say much about what was discussed and what is coming in the future, I want to share some realizations I had while experiencing the MVP summit.  The SharePoint Product is ever-improving, full of innovation but also a reactionary embodiment of MVP, client and market feedback. There are several features that come to mind that clients complain about where I have felt helpless in informing them that the features are not as mature as they would like it. Together, we figure out a way to make it work and deal with the limitations. It became clear that there are features that have taken a different purpose in the market place from the original vision. The SP Product group is working hard to react to these changes in vision and make SharePoint better for real life implementations.  It is easy to think that SharePoint should be all things to all people. In reality there are products that are very detailed in specific composites, they do this one thing well but severely lack in other areas.  Its easy sometimes to say, “What was Microsoft thinking with this feature?” the Product group is doing all they can to make the moving pieces better and dealing with challenges with having all of them work together.  Sometimes the features don’t fully embody the vision because of the many challenges, but trust me when I say the product group is really focused on delivery and innovation.  As I was speaking with a fellow MVP throughout the session, we spoke about the iPad 2(ironically announced this past week during the MVP summit) and Microsoft’s possible product answer; I realized the days of reactionary products from MS is over. There are many users that will remember Vista and the painful execution in that product, but there has been a lot of success in Windows 7. There was no rush for a reactionary answer to the Nintendo Wii, as a result a ground breaking and game changing product was brought to market, the XBOX –Kinect! I can’t say much here, but it’s safe to say, expect innovation, and execution of products and technology that will change the market instead of react to them!       There are many things I learned and I would love to share that have to do with perspective, technology, etc… but this is far as I can go in details. This might not be new to you or specifically the message that was shared during the summit. These are just my impressions of the event and the spirit of future vision. Great things ahead!

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• Apache config that uses two document roots based on whether the requested resource exists in the first [closed]

  - by mattalexx

  Background I have a client site that consists of a CakePHP installation and a Magento installation: /web/example.com/ /web/example.com/app/ <== CakePHP /web/example.com/app/webroot/ <== DocumentRoot /web/example.com/app/webroot/store/ <== Magento /web/example.com/config/ <== Site-wide config /web/example.com/vendors/ <== Site-wide libraries The server runs Apache 2.2.3. The problem The whole company has FTP access and got used to clogging up the /web/example.com/, /web/example.com/app/webroot/, and /web/example.com/app/webroot/store/ directories with their own files. Sometimes these files need HTTP access and sometimes they don't. In any case, this mess makes my job harder when it comes to maintaining the site. Code merges, tarring the live code, etc, is very complicated and usually requires a bunch of filters. Abandoned solution At first, I thought I would set up a new subdomain on the same server, move all of their files there, and change their FTP chroot. But that wouldn't work for these reasons: Firstly, I have no idea (and neither do they remember) what marketing materials they've sent out that contain URLs to certain resources they've uploaded to the server, using the main domain, and also using abstract subdomains that use the main virtual host because it has ServerAlias *.example.com. So suddenly having them only use static.example.com isn't feasible. Secondly, The PHP scripts in their projects are potentially very non-portable. I want their files to stay in as similar an environment as they were built as I can. Also, I do not want to debug their code to make it portable. Half-baked solution After some thought, I decided to find a way to section off the actual website files into another directory that they would not touch. The company's uploaded files would stay where they were. This would ensure that I didn't break any of their projects that needed HTTP access. It would look something like this: /web/example.com/ <== A bunch of their files are in here /web/example.com/app/webroot/ <== 1st DocumentRoot; A bunch of their files are in here /web/example.com/app/webroot/store/ <== Some more are in here /web/example.com/site/ <== New dir; Contains only site files /web/example.com/site/app/ <== CakePHP /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/ <== 2nd DocumentRoot /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/store/ <== Magento /web/example.com/site/config/ <== Site-wide config /web/example.com/site/vendors/ <== Site-wide libraries After I made this change, I would not need to pay attention to anything except for the stuff within /web/example.com/site/ and my job would be a lot easier. I would be the only one changing stuff in there. So here's where the Apache magic would happen: I need an HTTP request to http://www.example.com/ to first use /web/example.com/app/webroot/ as the document root. If nothing is found (no miscellaneous uploaded company projects are found), try finding something within /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/. Another thing to keep in mind is, the site might have some problems if the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] variable reads /web/example.com/app/webroot/ but the actual files are within /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/. It would be better if the DOCUMENT_ROOT environment variable could be /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/ for anything within the /web/example.com/site/app/webroot/ directory. Conclusion Is my half-baked solution possible with Apache 2.2.3? Is there a better way to solve this problem?

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• BEHIND THE SCENES AT A FLASH-MOB...

  - by OliviaOC

  Today, we interviewed Aarti, who recently organised a flash-mob for Oracle Campus, which you can see on our facebook page Hi Aarti, perhaps you could give us a quick introduction of yourself, and what you do at Oracle? I’ve been with Campus Recruitment for just over a year. I’ve been with Oracle for three years. I was keen to get into the campus role after having watched other colleagues working in campus and when the opportunity arrived I jumped at it. The journey has been fantastic thus far. I’m responsible for the GBU hiring at Oracle. Why did you record the flash-mob video - what were your goals? Flash-mobs were one thing that took off really big in India after the first one in Mumbai. It’s the hot thing in the student community at the moment. A better way to reach out and connect with students. I think that it is also a good way to demonstrate our openness and culture at Oracle – demonstrate that we are very flexible and that we have a cool culture. I knew the video could be shared on our social media pages and reach out to a wider student community What was the preparation and rehearsal for the video like? When I decided to do the video, I had to decide who I would like to do the flash-mob. The new campus hires to Oracle would be ideal for this. We were 2 teams at 2 different locations and Each team took 2-3 songs and choreographed it themselves. Every day at 5pm, each team would meet up and every other weekend the whole group met. Practicing went on for about a month like this. How was the video received by participants and by students on the University campus? The event was well received. We did it during the lunch break at the University so that there was a large presence of students around while the flash mob took place. We set up about an hour beforehand to get everything ready. The break-bell sounded and the students came out, that’s when the flash-mob started. The students were pleasantly surprised that a company was doing this. They also recognised some of the participants involved as former graduates. Since the flash-mob and the video of it that you recorded, have you had much response due to it? We have, especially in the past two weeks. We went back to the college to make some hires. The flash-mob was still fresh in their minds and they knew well who Oracle was as a result. Would you like to repeat this kind of creative initiative again with the recruitment team? Yes, absolutely! I’m over the moon with the flash-mob. My mind is working overtime now with ideas about the next things to do!

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• Parameterized StreamInsight Queries

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  The changes in our APIs enable a set of scenarios that were either not possible before or could only be achieved through workarounds. One such use case that people ask about frequently is the ability to parameterize a query and instantiate it with different values instead of re-deploying the entire statement. I’ll demonstrate how to do this in StreamInsight 2.1 and combine it with a method of using subjects for dynamic query composition in a mini-series of (at least) two blog articles. Let’s start with something really simple: I want to deploy a windowed aggregate to a StreamInsight server, and later use it with different window sizes. The LINQ statement for such an aggregate is very straightforward and familiar: var result = from win in stream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5))               select win.Avg(e => e.Value); Obviously, we had to use an existing input stream object as well as a concrete TimeSpan value. If we want to be able to re-use this construct, we can define it as a IQStreamable: var avg = myApp     .DefineStreamable((IQStreamable<SourcePayload> s, TimeSpan w) =>         from win in s.TumblingWindow(w)         select win.Avg(e => e.Value)); The DefineStreamable API lets us define a function, in our case from a IQStreamable (the input stream) and a TimeSpan (the window length) to an IQStreamable (the result). We can then use it like a function, with the input stream and the window length as parameters: var result = avg(stream, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)); Nice, but you might ask: what does this save me, except from writing my own extension method? Well, in addition to defining the IQStreamable function, you can actually deploy it to the server, to make it re-usable by another process! When we deploy an artifact in V2.1, we give it a name: var avg = myApp     .DefineStreamable((IQStreamable<SourcePayload> s, TimeSpan w) =>         from win in s.TumblingWindow(w)         select win.Avg(e => e.Value))     .Deploy("AverageQuery"); When connected to the same server, we can now use that name to retrieve the IQStreamable and use it with our own parameters: var averageQuery = myApp     .GetStreamable<IQStreamable<SourcePayload>, TimeSpan, double>("AverageQuery"); var result = averageQuery(stream, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)); Convenient, isn’t it? Keep in mind that, even though the function “AverageQuery” is deployed to the server, its logic will still be instantiated into each process when the process is created. The advantage here is being able to deploy that function, so another client who wants to use it doesn’t need to ask the author for the code or assembly, but just needs to know the name of deployed entity. A few words on the function signature of GetStreamable: the last type parameter (here: double) is the payload type of the result, not the actual result stream’s type itself. The returned object is a function from IQStreamable<SourcePayload> and TimeSpan to IQStreamable<double>. In the next article we will integrate this usage of IQStreamables with Subjects in StreamInsight, so stay tuned! Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• Moving abroad - Relocation advice

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  Oracle offers graduates from different European countries the opportunity to start their career abroad. Some already have experience with living abroad as they have done an exchange semester or internship in another county, for others it is the first time they will move abroad. Rui started in October 2011 as a Business Development Consultant in Dublin and moved from Portugal to Dublin, Ireland to start his career. For those planning to leave their home country and who desire to work abroad, he will share some tips and tricks in this article. When you’re faced with an opportunity like this, there are lots of things that will come to your mind. Sometimes it can be either very exciting, or even stressful. 1. First of all, try to relax. If you are certain you are moving abroad, all you need to do is some research about the country where you’re going to live, get to know its culture (gastronomy, important dates and events, its economy and effective ways to keep you in touch with your family and friends – such as mobile companies and Internet services), and start to understand the best locations (with good access) you could/should live in are. Don’t forget that initially you can be limited by transport and therefore it is important to explore the ideal places for you. During this time, Oracle provides everything you’ll need (papers, documents, etc.) to cross borders. 2. When you arrive, you understand that you are in a new country, in a new place, where all things (or most) are unknown to you. Before you panic, try to see it as a new challenge where new opportunities will come. Sometimes, it’s not easy I know, but the very best a new place has to give to you, is the opportunity to understand a new culture, get to know other people, other ways of working, and grow both as a person and professionally. So, you have nothing to lose in this kind of experiment. 3. When you arrive at Oracle, there’s a fantastic team that will help you with settling in, HR, Payroll, Relocation, IT. In my case, Oracle helped me with the relocation, they supported me to arrange everything such as helping out with all the paperwork and finding a new apartment. As you can see they will do their best to help you to be successful! 4. Engage with your new co-workers. Going to a place where you don’t know anyone can be tough sometimes but see it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and share experiences. Embrace it. 5. Plan ahead, try to get the most information possible and use it. Oracle is a multinational enterprise that will allow you to get to know a new labour market and give you the flexibility you need to understand your view of employment and occupation, giving you the very best opportunities to join different teams and working areas, so that you can work where you fit best. Good luck! If you’re thinking about starting a career abroad, read the following article: http://www.overseasdigest.com/movingtips.htm it can be very useful to you. Interested in starting your career at Oracle like Rui has? Please have a look at https://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies.

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• New PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 On Demand Standard Edition provides a complete set of IT services at a low, predictable monthly cost

  - by Robbin Velayedam

  At Oracle Open World last month, Oracle announced that we are extending our On Demand offerings with the general availability of PeopleSoft On Demand Standard Edition. Standard Edition represents Oracle’s commitment to providing customers a choice of solutions, technology, and deployment options commensurate with their business needs and future growth. The Standard Edition offering complements the traditional On Demand offerings (Enterprise and Professional Editions) by focusing on a low, predictable monthly cost model that scales with the size of your business.   As part of Oracle's open cloud strategy, customers can freely move PeopleSoft licensed applications between on premise and the various  on demand options as business needs arise.    In today’s business climate, aggressive and creative business objectives demand more of IT organizations. They are expected to provide technology-based solutions to streamline business processes, enable online collaboration and multi-tasking, facilitate data mining and storage, and enhance worker productivity. As IT budgets remain tight in a recovering economy, the challenge becomes how to meet these demands with limited time and resources. One way is to eliminate the variable costs of projects so that your team can focus on the high priority functions and better predict funding and resource needs two to three years out. Variable costs and changing priorities can derail the best laid project and capacity plans. The prime culprits of variable costs in any IT organization include disaster recovery, security breaches, technical support, and changes in business growth and priorities. Customers have an immediate need for solutions that are cheaper, predictable in cost, and flexible enough for long-term growth or capacity changes. The Standard Edition deployment option fulfills that need by allowing customers to take full advantage of the rich business functionality that is inherent to PeopleSoft HCM, while delegating all application management responsibility – such as future upgrades and product updates – to Oracle technology experts, at an affordable and expected price. Standard Edition provides the advantages of the secure Oracle On Demand hosted environment, the complete set of PeopleSoft HCM configurable business processes, and timely management of regular updates and enhancements to the application functionality and underlying technology. Standard Edition has a convenient monthly fee that is scalable by number of employees, which helps align the customer’s overall cost of ownership with its size and anticipated growth and business needs. In addition to providing PeopleSoft HCM applications' world class business functionality and Oracle On Demand's embassy-grade security, Oracle’s hosted solution distinguishes itself from competitors by offering customers the ability to transition between different deployment and service models at any point in the application ownership lifecycle. As our customers’ business and economic climates change, they are free to transition their applications back to on-premise at any time. HCM On Demand Standard Edition is based on configurability options rather than customizations, requiring no additional code to develop or maintain. This keeps the cost of ownership low and time to production less than a month on average. Oracle On Demand offers the highest standard of security and performance by leveraging a state-of-the-art data center with dedicated databases, servers, and secured URL all within a private cloud. Customers will not share databases, environments, platforms, or access portals with other customers because we value how mission critical your data are to your business. Oracle’s On Demand also provides a full breadth of disaster recovery services to provide customers the peace of mind that their data are secure and that backup operations are in place to keep their businesses up and running in the case of an emergency. Currently we have over 50 PeopleSoft customers delegating us with the management of their applications through Oracle On Demand. If you are a customer interested in learning more about the PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Standard Edition and how it can help your organization minimize your variable IT costs and free up your resources to work on other business initiatives, contact Oracle or your Account Services Representative today.

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• Incentivizing Work with Development Teams

  - by MarkPearl

  Recently I saw someone on twitter asking about incentives and if anyone had past experience with incentivizing work. I promised to respond with some of the experiences I have had in the past so here goes... **Disclaimer** - these are my experiences with incentives, generally in software development - in some other industries this may not be applicable – this is also my thinking at this point in time, with more experience my opinion may change. Incentivize at the level that you want people to group at If you are wanting to promote a team mentality, incentivize teams. If you want to promote an individual mentality, incentivize individuals. There is nothing worse than mixing this up. Some organizations put a lot of effort in establishing teams and team mentalities but reward individuals. This has a counter effect on the resources they have put towards establishing a team mentality. In the software projects that I work with we want promote cross functional teams that collaborate. Personally, if I was on a team and knew that there was an opportunity to work on a critical component of the system, and that by doing so I would get a bigger bonus, then I would be hesitant to include other people in solving that problem. Thus, I would hinder the teams efforts in being cross functional and reduce collaboration levels. Does that mean everyone in the team should get an even share of an incentive? In most situations I would say yes - even though this may feel counter-intuitive. I have heard arguments put forward that if “person x contributed more than person Y then they should be rewarded more” – This may sound controversial but I would rather treat people how would you like them to perform, not where they currently are at. To add to this approach, if someone is free loading, you bet your bottom dollar that the team is going to make this a lot more transparent if they feel that individual is going to be rewarded at the same level that everyone else is. Bad incentives promote destructive work If you are going to incentivize people, pick you incentives very carefully. I had an experience once with a sales person who was told they would get a bonus provided that they met an ordering target with a particular supplier. What did this person do? They sold everything at cost for the next month or so. They reached the goal, but the company didn't gain anything from it. It was a bad incentive. Expect the same with development teams, if you incentivize zero bug levels, you will get zero code committed to the solution. If you incentivize lines of code, you will get many many lines of bad code. Is there such a thing as a good incentives? Monetary wise, I am not sure there is. I would much rather encourage organizations to pay their people what they are worth upfront. I would also advise against paying money to teams as an incentive or even a bonus or reward for reaching a milestone. Rather have a breakaway for the team that promotes team building as a reward if they reach a milestone than pay them more money. I would also advise against making the incentive the reason for them to reach the milestone. If this becomes the norm it promotes people to begin to only do their job if there is an incentive at the end of the line. This is not a behaviour one wants to encourage. If the team or individual is in the right mind-set, they should not work any harder than they are right now with normal pay.

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• Applying for internship

  - by Margus

  At the moment I'm thinking about applying for internship at Eesti Energia. I seem to be eligible, but before contacting them I need to learn how to compile an informative and complete CV and cover letter. I do not consider myself as shallow minded, but also I'm not sure how to convincingly justify the stand of interest and how internship will help me in my future career. Course of life Tallinna Tehnikagümnaasium 2003 - 2006 Tallinna Tehnikaülikool 2006 – 2009 Military service at Signal Batallion Tallinna Tehnikaülikool 2010 – ... I started my academic career as Computer and Systems Engineer, but as I excelled in programming classes, I changed my major to Software Engineer and taken my specialty in web applications and logic. Nowadays I mainly use Java, Mathematica and C# to solve problems. For 2 times, I have taken part in ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, where my team won the nationals and did pretty well in Europe. Also as part of notable thing in my academic career, my team wrote the Kalah game AI, that won in University's main programming class AI tournament. My hobbies are mind games and occasional problem solving. Few years ago I also competed in International Checkers EM (requires being in top 3 in nationals) as part of cadet and junior age group - I did not come close to winning, but I exceeded about half of the players each time. In high school and gymnasium I took part and later was the captain of team, that passes regionals and made it to top 3 of nationals (and later won) in (blitz) russian checkers. That was impressive because, it was a team effort as we only had (depending on year) 2-3 strong players. Although I started programming exactly 9,5 years ago I have no work experience. Well actually thats not true, as I completed my army duty, I was hired for a year (days still counting) to be apart of communicational (emergency) infrastructure action group where I'm the teams IT specialist (it's more complicated). So I consider myself to be aware of: rough conditions, teamwork, high stress tolerance, being on time and what responsibility means. As negative things I can mention: I do not have drivers licence. Although only Estonian and English are noted as requirements, then Russian is most likely required as well and I barely understand some of it. Reasons why I want to apply there, are: I need to do at least 4-6 week traineeship and it's in the right field I have the requirements and tasks seem easy enough Company is well known and has fairly good reputation Family and friend think, that it would be acceptable place to work Myriad of options to do final thesis about open up Work place is located in the same city I live atm. At moment, I see myself having a hard time explain why I would prefer it or where I see myself in 10 years if I was offered a job there. Question I have some idea how Curriculum Vitæ should look like, or I can google for template, but I'm not sure how to write informative one. Last I did one, it looked like: picture + contact information + education. Vaguely I only remember, that cover letter should be custom tailored for each place you apply containing ...

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• Data breakpoints to find points where data gets broken

  - by raccoon_tim

  When working with a large code base, finding reasons for bizarre bugs can often be like finding a needle in a hay stack. Finding out why an object gets corrupted without no apparent reason can be quite daunting, especially when it seems to happen randomly and totally out of context. Scenario Take the following scenario as an example. You have defined the a class that contains an array of characters that is 256 characters long. You now implement a method for filling this buffer with a string passed as an argument. At this point you mistakenly expect the buffer to be 256 characters long. At some point you notice that you require another character buffer and you add that after the previous one in the class definition. You now figure that you don’t need the 256 characters that the first member can hold and you shorten that to 128 to conserve space. At this point you should start thinking that you also have to modify the method defined above to safeguard against buffer overflow. It so happens, however, that in this not so perfect world this does not cross your mind. Buffer overflow is one of the most frequent sources for errors in a piece of software and often one of the most difficult ones to detect, especially when data is read from an outside source. Many mass copy functions provided by the C run-time provide versions that have boundary checking (defined with the _s suffix) but they can not guard against hard coded buffer lengths that at some point get changed. Finding the bug Getting back to the scenario, you’re now wondering why does the second string get modified with data that makes no sense at all. Luckily, Visual Studio provides you with a tool to help you with finding just these kinds of errors. It’s called data breakpoints. To add a data breakpoint, you first run your application in debug mode or attach to it in the usual way, and then go to Debug, select New Breakpoint and New Data Breakpoint. In the popup that opens, you can type in the memory address and the amount of bytes you wish to monitor. You can also use an expression here, but it’s often difficult to come up with an expression for data in an object allocated on the heap when not in the context of a certain stack frame. There are a couple of things to note about data breakpoints, however. First of all, Visual Studio supports a maximum of four data breakpoints at any given time. Another important thing to notice is that some C run-time functions modify memory in kernel space which does not trigger the data breakpoint. For instance, calling ReadFile on a buffer that is monitored by a data breakpoint will not trigger the breakpoint. The application will now break at the address you specified it to. Often you might immediately spot the issue but the very least this feature can do is point you in the right direction in search for the real reason why the memory gets inadvertently modified. Conclusions Data breakpoints are a great feature, especially when doing a lot of low level operations where multiple locations modify the same data. With the exception of some special cases, like kernel memory modification, you can use it whenever you need to check when memory at a certain location gets changed on purpose or inadvertently.

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• Procedual level generation for a platformer game (tilebased) using player physics

  - by Notbad

  I have been searching for information about how to build a 2d world generator (tilebased) for a platformer game I am developing. The levels should look like dungeons with a ceiling and a floor and they will have a high probability of being just made of horizontal rooms but sometimes they can have exits to a top/down room. Here is an example of what I would like to achieve. I'm refering only to the caves part. I know level design won't be that great when generated but I think it is possible to have something good enough for people to enjoy the procedural maps (Note: Supermetrod Spoiler!): http://www.snesmaps.com/maps/SuperMetroid/SuperMetroidMapNorfair.html Well, after spending some time thinking about this I have some ideas to create the maps that I would like to share with you: 1) I have read about celular automatas and I would like to use them to carve the rooms but instead of carving just a tile at once I would like to carve full columns of tiles. Of course this carving system will have some restrictions like how many tiles must be left for the roof and the ceiling, etc... This way I could get much cleaner rooms than using the ussual automata. 2) I want some branching into the rooms. It will have little probability to happen but I definitely want it. Thinking about carving I came to the conclusion that I could be using some sort of path creation algorithm that the carving system would follow to create a path in the rooms. This could be more noticiable if we make the carving system to carve columns with the height of a corridor or with the height of a wide room (this will be added to the system as a param). This way at some point I could spawn a new automa beside the main one to create braches. This new automata should play side by side with the first one to create dead ends, islands (both paths created by the automatas meet at some point or lead to the same room. It would be too long to explain here all the tests I have done, etc... just will try to summarize the problems to see if anyone could bring some light to solve them (I don't mind sharing my successes but I think they aren't too relevant): 1) Zone reachability: How can I make sure that the player will be able to reach all zones I created (mainly when branches happen or vertical rooms are created). When branches are created I have to make sure that there will be a way to get onto the new created branch. I mean a bifurcation that the player could follow. Player will follow the main path or jump to a platform to get onto the other way). On the other hand if an island is created by the meeting of both branches I need to make sure the player will be able to get onto the island too. 2) When a branch is created and corridors are generated for each branch how can I make then both merge or repel to create an island or just make them separated corridors. 3) When I create a branch and an island is created becasue both corridors merge at somepoint or they lead to the same room, is there any way to detect this and randomize where to create the needed platforms to get onto the created isle? This platforms could be created at the start of the island or at the end. I guess part of the problem could be solved using some sort of graph following the created paths but I'm a bit lost in this sea of precedural content creation :). On the other hand I don't expect a solution to the problem but some information to get me moving forward again. Thanks in advance.

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